Exploring art in its many incarnations

melting

Finally I was able to get some more Damar resin, so I was happy making some more encaustic medium. There’s something really relaxing about making the medium; it consists of weighing the proportions, melting the Damar resin first (has a higher melting point) and adding the beeswax. Then the mixture is stirred until everything is melted and incorporated into a unified liquid. It is important to ensure that the temperature is low and even, if the temperature is too high it’ll start to smoke, bad for health and bad for the medium. After the mixture is ready, it is poured into a muffin pan until it is cooled and solidified.

Taking it out is like taking out ice cubes, the pan lightly hit on a hard surface and the ingots pop right out. By the way, I just call them ingots because they remind me of precious gold ingots, it is not some official term.

Some people filter the molten liquid because the Damar resin has debris/vegetable matter (Damar resin is essentially tree sap). I prefer to render them into ingots and scrape out the debris from the bottom – the debris settles on the bottom. It’s a lot less messy and troublesome than pouring the hot liquid through a filter, in my opinion.

Once all the ingots are made, they are ready to be used when the inspiration strikes.